In the stacks: digital collections receive finishing touches

February 12, 2013 at 6:02 pm

What were librarians up to over winter break? Well, some of them were putting the finishing touches on new additions to the Beloit College Digital Collections! Over the break, a new collection of digital copies of Beloit College Magazine was released. At present, the collection includes PDF copies of the magazine from 1976 through the present and from 1910 through 1915. Eventually, the collection is expected to contain the complete run of the magazine from 1910 forward, and digitization work on the remaining issues is already underway!

The full-text of the magazines can be searched from the collection’s homepage, and browse options are available to locate issues by decade and by year. (The most recent issues in the collection do not include Class Notes sections due to privacy concerns.)

In case you’re still hungry for more Beloit College history after reading the magazines, visit the Histories of Beloit College collection and view the four new documents that have been added to it over the break. These documents contain addresses and historical sketches written during the mid- and late-1800s by important figures from Beloit’s history, including Henry Mitchell Whitney and Joseph Emerson (the latter is pictured below). Most of the addresses were delivered at some of the college’s earliest anniversary celebrations and discuss key events related to Beloit’s founding and infancy. Like the magazines, the full-text of these documents can be searched from the collection homepage.

So what’s next for the digital collections? As mentioned above, magazine issues will continue to be added over time, and two additional histories are being prepared for upload. Check back often for those! Also, digitization of hand-illustrated diaries detailing city and college life in the early 1900s is currently in progress.

Have fun perusing these new additions to the collections, and don’t forget that you can now add comments and tags to digital collection items.